Rupert Thomson: The Insult

Kukowski gave me my first cane. It was lighter than I’d expected. Longer, too, almost shoulder-height. I was supposed to hold it at waist-level and then walk forwards, scanning, rather in the manner of someone with a metal detector. Tap, tap, tap went the toughened nylon tip. There was something ludicrous about the whole process; I wanted to pour scorn on it. But behind Kukowski’s patience there lurked a threat: it was either the cane or it was back to tranquillisers, headaches, isolation. I took the cane.

In the mornings I was still seeing Nurse Janssen. During the afternoons I had to pick my way through the obstacle course that was Kukowski’s world — a world that would be mine, he assured me, as soon as I was discharged. Towards evening Visser would pay me a visit. Sometimes he stayed just long enough to ask after my health. On other occasions we’d talk for an hour or more. He was almost always complimentary. Bilateral cortical damage is so rare, Martin. It may sound tactless, but it’s a privilege to have you here. Whenever I was alone I was encouraged to work on what Kukowski called my ‘long-cane technique’. There was the physical manipulation of the cane itself, of course, but there were also various mental skills and disciplines which had to be mastered. I had to learn how to use sound to determine distance and direction. I had to sensitise myself to echoes (a method known as echolocation). I had to be able to memorise a route. And so on. There seemed to be no end to it. It was the height of summer now, and I spent as much time as I could outdoors. Most days, after supper, I could be found in the clinic gardens, practising.

And that was when it happened.

One evening I was crossing the lawn, feeling as if I knew each mound, each root, each blade of grass by heart, when I realised that what lay in front of me — what I could ‘see’, as it were — was not the usual grey, featureless and empty. It was green, and there were shapes in it. You must be imagining it, I told myself. This is one of the illusions Visser warned you about. You think you’re seeing, but you’re not.

I stood quite still and looked around me.

The shapes in the green were trees. And I could see the lawn, too, reaching away from me, then sloping down. There was a smoothness at the end of it. A lake. I could see a stand of poplars, tapering like rockets as they lifted into the sky.

The sky!

For a moment I didn’t dare to move in case it all cut out and I went blind again. Then I knew what I would do. I chose one tree and slowly began to walk towards it. The tree grew larger. At last I was close enough to touch it. I reached out. There was bark beneath my fingers, ridged and damp. I looked up. Leaves shifting in the evening wind.

This was no illusion. I was seeing the tree, the gardens — everything. I was seeing. I stood there with the tips of my fingers touching bark. Leaves turned and turned above my head — the rush of blood through arteries.

I couldn’t move.

At last I set out across the lawn, my cane scanning the blades of grass in front of me, left and right, left and right. I climbed the steps to the entrance, feeling for dimensions, height and width, as I’d been taught. Inside the clinic I followed the corridor that led to my ward. My vision had faded slightly, but I could still make out the pipes massed on the ceiling, the plain wooden chairs against the wall in the visitors’ waiting-room. I had to be careful to ignore the doctor who was walking towards me. I had to make sure I didn’t move to one side. Suddenly it struck me — an exquisite moment, this — that I was only pretending I couldn’t see.

I didn’t say anything about it, though. It was partly excitement, partly disbelief. Partly fear of ridicule as well, no doubt; I didn’t want people thinking I was mad. I felt I ought to explore what was happening for myself, to get the measure of it. I needed to be sure of what I had.

When I got into bed that night I still hadn’t mentioned it to anyone. I lay there in the dark and stared at the ceiling. The paint had cracks in it. I saw the great rivers of the world — the Ganges, the Amazon, the Nile. I saw areas of nothing — the Russian Steppes, the Empty Quarter. My heart was jumping like something on a trampoline. It just kept jumping.

It was hours before I slept.

Bits flying off me.

This time it’s my eyes. I watch them spring out of their sockets (somehow that’s possible). I notice how they bounce on the road behind me. I see them burst.

But I run on.

Then it’s my nose, my ears. Some teeth. The skin of my face peels off like a mask and flaps away into the bright gold distance. A bat, a leaf. A pricked balloon.

I’m still running.

A tiny section of my skull detaches and whirls backwards. Asymmetrical, off-white, it looks like broken china, part of a vase. That priceless missing piece.

As I run I can feel the sockets where my eyes once were. Hollow, smooth, picked clean. My skull’s a flute. The air plays haunting music on it.

When I wake up, it’s morning and I’m blind again.

That day passed more slowly than any day I can remember. To be given back my sight and then deprived of it again — I could imagine no greater cruelty; it seemed an act worthy of a torturer. Tears slid from the corners of my eyes on to the pillow. I wouldn’t talk to anyone, least of all to Nurse Janssen; I couldn’t bear her kindness, her concern, both of which seemed inexhaustible.

At last, towards evening, I willed myself to sleep.

I heard the clock strike ten. As I raised my head off the pillow I saw the same green that I’d seen the previous night. And there were shapes in it. Only this time they were beds, not trees. Rows of metal beds, each one painted the same colour. The eerie, shiny cream that institutions like so much.

I pushed the covers back and swung my legs on to the floor. I stood up. The lino was cool beneath my feet, and slightly sticky. I could see Smulders in the next bed, one solid curve from his shoulder to his knee; for the first time it occurred to me that Smulders might be fat. I moved out into the ward, stepping delicately through rectangles of moonlight. The night was thick with blind men’s dreams.

Two doors separated the wash-room from the ward. Between the doors was a ventilation area, open to the air at either end. Placing my hands on the railing, I gazed out over the orchard and the vegetable patch. A smell lifted past my face, a smell that was like my childhood distilled: warm asphalt, grass clippings, the skin of plums. Beyond the clinic grounds the land rose up, a replica of Smulders’ sleeping form. I saw lights dart across the sky. I couldn’t tell if they were shooting-stars or aeroplanes. They were too far off.

I passed through the second door, closing it softly behind me. Though I was familiar with every feature of the wash-room, that very familiarity was strange, based as it was on discoveries I’d made while blind. Now I could make the same discoveries again, using my eyes: the tin basins, the window-catches, the spigots on the taps (as bulbous as murderers’ thumbs) — nothing was too ordinary to escape my attention. I was shocked, though, by the dilapidation and neglect I saw around me. There were broken windows high up in the wall, draughts haunting the jagged gaps. There was paint peeling from the ceiling. There was damp. I don’t know how long I’d been in there when I was startled by the sudden rattle of loose glass panes in the outer wash-room door. I stepped behind the wooden partition that hid the toilet, and waited. The inner door opened and somebody walked in. At first I wasn’t sure who it was. Then I recognised the breathing. Smulders.

Peering round the edge of the partition, I watched intently as he stripped his nightshirt off and let it fall to the stone floor. He stood stark naked for a moment, listening. Then he reached out with both hands. He looked like a ghost — his arms horizontal, his fingers tickling the air. At last he found a tap. He turned it on, began to soap himself. His hands sucked and belched in the fleshy pockets of his armpits. The hair that grew there was matted, long and lank, identical to the hair you might pull from the plughole of a bath. It was like seeing a human being for the first time. We’re ugly, aren’t we? It’s extraordinary how ugly we are. For a moment I was afraid I might vomit. (I hoped I wouldn’t; apart from anything else, I didn’t want Smulders knowing I was there.) I sank down, behind the partition. As I fought the nausea I had a curious thought: what a blessing blindness could be, what a respite from the frightful squalor of the world!